Sunday, February 23, 2014

When was the last time Republicans were right about something?

That’s not really a rhetorical question.I am trying to figure out when it was.

Their apocryphal predictions about Obamacare are all
turning out to be wrong.

They still insist, despite all the evidence, that
the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (The Stimulus) was a failure
despite all it did to prevent the economy collapsing into an actual depression.

The insisted that the President’s plan to bail out
GM and Chrysler were doomed to failure.Both GM and Chrysler are thriving and by time we finish selling the last
of our stake in those companies we will actually have made a little money on
the GM bailout and will have recovered almost all of the Chrysler bailout
monies, without Washington bureaucrats telling the management of either company
how to run their businesses.

Many, led by Senators McCain and Graham have
criticized everything that this president has done on foreign policy.Often changing positions almost overnight
like McCain did with the President’s response to the Arab Spring revolution in
Libya.

They take tragedies and mistakes and insist that
they are scandals and keep repeating the same discredited attacks long after
they have been debunked.

They acknowledged the reality of Climate Change
before they decided it was a hoax (George Bush ran on a Carbon Tax in the 2000
campaign).

They were in favor of insurance exchanges before
they were against them.RomenyCare in
Massachusetts was the implementation of a plan from the Heritage Foundation in
response to Hillary care in 1993.Romney
implemented it in Mass in 2005 and then ran against the same plan in 2012.The House GOP Budgets for the past few years
have included a plan to transition people on Medicare from the current system
to a system of insurance exchanges where people would shop for and buy
individual insurance using Premium Support payments from the federal government.

Republicans are very concerned now about the Deficit
and resulting National Debt only when there is a Democrat in the White
House.When Reagan tripled the annual
deficit and more than doubled the National Debt, he became an almost religious
Icon of the Right.Bush the 2nd
inherited a budget surplus and within 8 years had created a $1.3T deficit, more
than doubling the National Debt in the process while Republicans kept insisting
that the disastrous Bush Tax cuts be made permanent.And not the incessantly criticize President
Obama, glibly ignoring the simple fact that the annual deficit has FALLEN every
year of his Presidency and has been more than cut in half as a percentage of
the overall economy.

Republicans led us into the disaster that is Iraq
based on faulty or even manufactured intelligence.

Republicans insist that we are overregulated while
ignoring the fact that the Gulf Oil Spill, the series of oil pipeline ruptures across
the country, the Freedom Industries spill in WV, the coal ash pond leaks in
North Carolina, and the Financial Crisis that led to the current sluggish
economy were ALL the result or either inadequate regulations or regulations
that were not adequately enforced.

They criticize the President because the economy isn’t
growing as fast as anyone would like, claiming that the President’s policies have
failed, all the while refusing to pass any of the measures he has proposed to stimulate
job growth and boost the economy.

They blocked sensible gun control programs like
expanding back ground check to close the Gun Show Loophole, proposals that have
the support of a large majority of American’s.

They have blocked the President’s attempt to pass
Comprehensive Immigration Reform, insisting on enforcement first, while
ignoring the fact that the Border Patrol has tripled in size under President
Obama, that ICE and the Border Patrol have deported more undocumented workers
than any administration in history and ignoring the fact that we have been a
close to net 0 illegal immigration in the past 5 years.